Real Estate Freedom Series – Ryan “Rotty” Garcilazo

[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:00] What’s up everyone. Hey Mike, Cambray from flipnerd.com. I recently hosted an online event for members of my professional real estate investor Facebook group, which you can access by visiting flipper.com/professional. It’s only for professionals, not new folks, but wanted to share this with everybody. And today I wanted to share, um, this amazing event.

That we call the freedom series with eight industry legends today’s episode is with Ryan Roddy, Garcia Lazo. Rodney. Go ahead, buddy. Take it away. Tell us a little bit about yourself and then I’m going to ask you a few questions.

Ryan: [00:00:35] No worries. So what’s up everybody. So am I the first guy today?

Mike: [00:00:38] You’re the first.

Yeah,

Ryan: [00:00:39] just the way, right? There’s freedom. That’s freedom.

Mike: [00:00:43] We’re going to have the best first today. Okay.

Ryan: [00:00:48] Appreciate you. So my name is Ryan. Rodney Garcia lives in the rehab Depot. Uh, years ago, I’ve been in the game, I’ll be 39, uh, nine 11. Uh, I’ve been in the game since 22. I’ve been flipping homes. Um, if you [00:01:00] hit a thousand stop counting and as contractors, which I’m still a licensed contractor, we’ve worked with investors over the years and we realized there’s a huge difference in the divide.

And, uh, we don’t see eye to eye for many amazing reasons, which is really just comes down to education. So over the years we developed the rehab Depot, the rehab Depot consults, trains, and educates

Mike: [00:01:17] those

Ryan: [00:01:17] bootcamps. And what we do now is we give you. The insight. So when you’re flipping and rehabbing, where you won’t take on a deal, we teach you how to look at it like a contractor.

So you actually level the playing field and do not get taken advantage of. So that’s, that’s in a nutshell, Mike, um, and I’m glad to be here. Thank you very much. Glad to be part of the vestry for you. And I’m glad to help as many people as they can to many investors get ripped off, man. I’m still watching them get ripped off.

It’s ridiculous. And some of these investors think they’re not, that’s the best part. They still, it, we’re not getting rid

Mike: [00:01:48] of a Rite of passage for a new real estate investor to get screwed on a couple of rehabs. And hopefully you learn after a couple, but amen. So let’s kick it off. So this is it’s interesting.

I was thinking about this today. I was writing a little article [00:02:00] earlier about freedom and, uh, it’s interesting for me. Like, I find that whenever I get down or whenever, whenever, like it’s a weird time right now, I’ll say that. I’m probably having, you know, one of the best years ever in my business. I know a lot of real estate investors that are, um, because we figured out how to get through adversity, right.

Like throw a problem at me and I’m going to find a way through it or around it or something eventually. Right. And so I know a lot of us that are on here. That’s why I want to have this group for professionals, because that’s how we think, like I got a problem. It’s not like, Oh shit, I got to go home. Now.

It’s like, okay, how am I going to fix this? Because if we’ve already been through a bunch of crap. Right. But what I found is whenever I start thinking about like, What I’m grateful for. And that’s why my, my two favorite holidays tend to be like around the 4th of July and around Thanksgiving, Christmas, I love Christmas, but it’s, you’re so hung up on gifts and like all this crap, you know, it’s just, it takes a lot of the noise.

Yeah. Out of like, what am I thankful for? What am I, what do I feel blessed about? And 4th of July, we got to feel blessed because we’re in the greatest, greatest country in the world. Right. And we have so much opportunity here. And so [00:03:00] what does freedom mean to you? My friend.

Ryan: [00:03:02] As a, as I take a sip.

Mike: [00:03:05] Well, you said you had a beer in there, so maybe I have a beard

Ryan: [00:03:07] here.

People. That’s how we do it in Chicago. It looks like a, it looks like a coffee mug. Doesn’t it? So the reality is what does freedom mean? To me? The freedom means to me is I can do what I want when I want to. How about with who I want, which is the easy answer. Right. But ultimately it’s freedom. It’s the freedom to.

Wake up in the morning and appreciate, like you just say what I have. So for example, right before this call, I took my son to the gas station to fill up his tire. Before that I was on a sales call. Before that sales call, I was on a student call. It’s the freedom to be. And more importantly, to me, it’s the freedom to live.

Mike: [00:03:34] So

Ryan: [00:03:34] living on your terms within those bounds with ethics and morals, of course, traditions and values, you know, I’m a, I’m at the edge of that. Like I said before, I’m 38 gonna be 39. I’m on the edge of that millennial link. So even I look at 30 year olds ago, what the hell is wrong with you? Like who raised you?

Because I’m not 30, I’m almost 40. So. You know, I have those, I have a lot of values and traditions instilled in me and I value that and I trade that off to my kids and my wife and my, and my family. [00:04:00] But

Mike: [00:04:00] to me, that’s

Ryan: [00:04:01] the ultimate freedom is to get up in the morning and do things I’ve never done before.

Right? Every day I’m growing, you know, talking with you, I grow doing these all day long growth teaching with students. I grow. And most importantly, I have no fear of failure. So when you’re able to do that, that’s freedom. Right. You have the freedom to fail. And to me, that’s, there’s nothing better than that.

Go ahead. Take a shot, take a shot.

Mike: [00:04:25] That’s it. That’s how you get stronger for sure. Yeah. I took a shot. So guys that are, for those of you that are watching right now, I want this to be as interactive as possible. We’re going to open up the questions here in just a couple of minutes, but tell me what freedom means to you.

Right? A lot of us, I think are blessed because we’re entrepreneurs, even if we’re not where we want to be yet. The truth is as entrepreneurs. We’re never where we want to be. We keep moving the goal line all the time. But, uh, the reality is, is like, if you’ve worked for somebody else before you’ve worked in a job, that’s my background.

I left corporate America about almost 13 years ago to pursue some entrepreneurial ventures ventures, like real estate. And, uh, you know, there was a point where I was scared to [00:05:00] death and then eventually I’m like, man, I’m never going back. Like I don’t, I, I got over this hump of realizing that, um, you know, I can.

I can sustain myself and my family. Like I have control of my hands finally. Right. That’s not my story. So tell us what freedom means to you. You have that in it. I’d love to hear it. So, um, so let me ask you for people that are watching here, we’re talking to a bunch of professional, real estate investors.

How do you, how do you, based on your experience, like how do you think they get more freedom in their lives? You’ve worked with a lot of people. You’ve worked with certainly a lot of newbies and some veteran folks you’ve worked with massive hedge funds, like everywhere in between. What’s, what’s the kind of key to success you’ve seen for people to get more freedom in their life.

And by freedom, you would probably generally talking about financial freedom and then time freedom. How do you get more of your time back?

Ryan: [00:05:42] Well, you just said it right there. You give like a whole spectrum, right? Of all the people that we’ve worked with, the continue to work with I’ve had the luxury and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with the best in the gang and see where they’re at, how they’re doing 200.

Two 300, 400 flips a year, but I got to know them personally. I get to see their struggles, their financial dreams and their financial nightmares. [00:06:00] Um, you know, at the end of the day I have this thing, like everybody it’s playing, you know, you’re playing to be good. And the best part is I’m talking to people who aren’t movies.

And that’s refreshing because I really don’t operate with newbies. I work with mid-level to high level guys all day, all day, every day. And we talk about different things that a newbie wouldn’t understand yet. You need to get that, that you need to get the experience. Do you need to cut yourself up and get your teeth cut on certain things and get those experiences I haven’t had yet?

Right. So I could talk to this group, understand that they know what I’m talking about here and that you could play to be good, but you must continue training to be great. Right. And that’s where I think everybody on the call understands that. You guys are sitting good. You guys have achieved a lot. You’ve made a thousand mistakes and you’ll make a thousand more that’s okay.

But if you’re of the mindset that you’re fearless, right? Who gives a shit. Let’s keep it real. I didn’t jump on this call to be fluffy. I’m rotting. You keep it right. Real right. So at the end of the day, there’s a lot of issues with it there, which is fear. Everybody’s scared of shit. What the hell are you scared of?

But fear itself, right? [00:07:00] If to me, fear failure is like fear leads to failure to launch. Okay. And if they were to launch these, the failure to prepare it and failure to prepare leads to failure, execute, and then you got zero. It’s that simple. Right? And then you’re calling guys like us saying, what did I do wrong?

But I D the idea of freedom is that you have the ability to grow within your community within your network. And here’s something I did personally. And I took a lot of shipboard over the years. I would say we hit our peak as contractors, probably in 2015, 2016, we were doing 20, 25 flips a month, which was crazy.

We were well over a hundred a year. We were winning a lot of awards. And I was stressed the hell out. I started having anxiety attacks and I was like, man, what am I doing wrong? I’m not taking care of myself, all these things we’re going after the wrong things.

Mike: [00:07:43] But I

Ryan: [00:07:43] didn’t realize that I was also in the same circles.

I need to get out of my circles. Right. And I’m not saying they were bad circles. They weren’t negative circles. Those circles had plateaued. And I’m coasting with them. I’m like, hell no, I’m out of here. That’s when I said, I’m going to take, I want to jump. I’ve been to other States. I want to go to other [00:08:00] cities.

I want to see the country. I want to see whats who’s slipping in Arizona. Who’s slipping in Tampa. Who’s doing what in Miami, who’s doing what Cleveland. And when I did that, I grew tremendously. I made 1,006. It’s a bunch of different markets or different people or different cultures or different attitudes or different Swagger’s different, but money’s the same.

Money’s not emotional. So when you kept that same baseline and you kind of explored outside Jerome, I love Chicago for years. I didn’t know business in Chicago for damn near five years. And everybody gave me shit, all your sell out. You’re doing this, that and the other. I just came back. I think I told you this, Mike just came back to Chicago and started doing business Chicago.

And I would say towards the beginning of the year, right before COVID. And I started interviewing my own. People in Chicago are still here five years after. Yeah. I left it and I said, well, you’re still here. Then you must be doing something right. I want to talk about, and that’s what I mean by the evolution of freedom is it’s okay to leave your little click, get out there and see the world.

That’s why masterminds are so good. Cause there’s so many different ones. They’re not all good, but there’s some that are [00:09:00] better than others. There’s people in those groups meet those people. Don’t judge a book by their cover. Because that’s not freedom. Right? You start cutting yourself. You’re you’re you started giving yourself these, these, uh, imaginary.

I don’t like the guy the way he speaks. I don’t like the guy the way he looks. I don’t like the guy that, because of where he comes from, get out of your head. You’re only in your own way and that’s not freedom,

Mike: [00:09:20] paradoxically. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. What what’s, uh, for people that are watching right now, what do you think the biggest piece of advice you can give?

You just share some of it, but give the people specifically those that are rehabbers. I know you spent a lot of effort teaching people to rehab, better, putting systems and processes in place, but what, what, what can you do to help people get more freedom in their lives? What kind of advice can you give or guidance on how to get more of it?

There’s a question here and I’ll kind of pull us aside into this. One of the questions was around, uh, once you’re in control of your time and your freedom, like how do you keep the cashflow moving to. To be able to kind of keep that balance of having freedom, but the business still runs without you. And I know what, how I feel about that, but go ahead.

And why don’t you go ahead and answer that?

Ryan: [00:09:58] Uh, for me, it’s [00:10:00] I put systems in place, right? I’m a systems guy. That’s what, that’s what we teach. But as a contractor, you have a level countries. You have sea level contract is the level. Contractors are the ones you can’t afford. They’re not rehabbing your properties.

You can’t afford them. They’re charging you 40% markup, right? C-level guys are going to be able to play in your realm, which is 10%, maybe 15%, probably 12%. They don’t have systems. You are the system, right? So as an investor, you’re the plug and play. What we’ve learned over the years is as a contractor, I can’t depend on my client to give me a plug and play.

I’m the plug and play. And it should not be that way. Right. The investor should say, I’m hiring you guys as a service. Here’s my scope, my budget, my process. And then I plug in. Okay, great. When do I invoice? How do I, how would you like me to invoice? When do you guys do draws? What are your contracts look like?

What kind of timeline are we on? What’s your budget? But investors are so close to the guard. And the reality is because they don’t know enough. So when you start playing to the contractor, yeah, Luke’s right. You hired me for a service. You tell me what you want done. So to [00:11:00] answer your question, understanding that I have systems, like we built out a software system for that.

So that, that manages inventory manages common communications, the conversations, paperwork, document, inventory, things like that. But the reality of being you’re able to be a great project manager, I’m able to hire others, other project managers and train them and say, listen, this isn’t rocket science. You don’t manage the people as investors, unless you’re a contractor.

How do you manage the people? If you’d have no idea what they do, manage the process and the tasks within that process. And you’ll find some efficiencies. All you do is if you hire a guy like me, right? Let’s say, I’m speaking as a GC, you hire a GC like me who does know what they’re doing. You can’t manage me.

You don’t know more than me. So what you do is you cater to me in terms of, let me give him what he needs in the form of support so that he could continue doing what he does, which is manage the job and the people. Because when you hire a GC, he is a project manager, which you’re paying a market for. [00:12:00] So all of a sudden you have these, these, you have these, I’m telling you, it’s like a dual, it’s a really a dual, but.

That’s what gives us the freedom is that we know how to manage the process.

Mike: [00:12:08] Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. And I’d say, you know, even outside of rehab, I’m not sure for some reason inside of our, we’re doing this inside of a tool called be live and it’s not showing who’s posting it just as Facebook users.

So we can’t tell exactly who is asking some of these questions, but that’s okay. Well, we’ll go ahead and answer them way. You know, for a long time in my business, what I found is there’s a lot of real estate investors. Everybody in this group is going to be different if you’re doing two or three deals a month and you’re.

You generally can’t afford to. Uh, hire many other people on your team, right? You just don’t have enough income or profit in your business to, uh, invest back in, in that level. So that’s the beauty of scaling, like scaling for, for the point of scaling. So you can get a fucking Lambo or show checks or whatever.

Like,

Ryan: [00:12:50] I don’t even want to hear that shit

Mike: [00:12:53] about money is a tool that allows you to leverage and do more things. It could be. Impacting your church. It could be doing a lot of things. It [00:13:00] also could be impacting your business. Like now I have resources to go hire somebody that’s better than me, or has more time than me.

You’re effectively using that to buy your time back. Right? So for those of you that are at two to three deals a month, and you’re, you’re like staying small and keeping it all, like that’s a real thing, but that’s a job. That’s not a business. So that’s what we want.

Ryan: [00:13:16] Well, but the jump, but the jump on the theme of freedom.

If you choose as an investor, not to learn the construction of the contracting side, you’ll never have freedom. You don’t need to hire somebody to do that. You have to take the accountability to say, listen, I’ve learned real estate and I’ve learned financing and I’ve learned investing. I need to learn some level of construction.

You’re never going to have financial freedom because guys like me. Right. When I was contracting are going to take your money without blinking. And it’s your fault. It’s not mine. It’s just a, it’s not my fault that you don’t know what I do. Right. That’s why we created the Ray of depo because you have to understand dude, that these guys know what they’re doing, whether they play it a loop or not.

And it’s your stake, it’s your property. It’s [00:14:00] your money? It’s your future?

Mike: [00:14:01] Yup. Hey Ryan, since we’re talking about rehabbing, by the way, guys, post some questions in here. We’ve got about another. Almost 15 minutes with Rodney. So I wanna make sure we’re answering your questions. We talk all the time, Rodney, and I could talk on the phone for hours and you know, BS about stuff.

I want to make sure we answer your question. So well, one thing I want to ask you though, I found this too, when we used to be rehabbed at five, six, seven houses at any time, like, what I found is I got to a point to where. I was important to my GC and he was important to me. He, in fact, I was most of his business and he was all a mine.

Right. And so, yeah, what I found is if you’re doing a couple of rehabs here and there, you’re never super important to any GC or any contractor because they’re, they’re working for 20 different people. So they’re not loyal to you, but the more you can add value to them by providing some stability in terms of like, I’m going to keep you busy.

Um, then the more, uh, the more, you know, the relationship just changed, right? Like we’re, we’re important to each other. Talk about that a little bit from, from a GC perspective,

Ryan: [00:14:58] you got to build some continuity and [00:15:00] consistency, right? So w with that said, Uh, every investor I’ve ever met, said, Oh, Brahma, get you 10 this year.

I’m going to give you 12 this year. Really? How many did you do? How much did you do last year? I did four. How did, how are you going to go from fucking four to 14? Just like that. Just magic. I can do that. So I guess there’s those GCs out there that are naive. And there’s those like myself, just aren’t, it just doesn’t

Mike: [00:15:22] make sense.

You’ll believe it. When you look at it,

Ryan: [00:15:24] you look at it and say, listen, if you share with me your budget, I can tell you what you can do within that budget. And if the deal does it work, it doesn’t work. Don’t buy it. You can’t force a profit. And then what you do is you start learning how I operate, what I charge, where do I make my money?

And then you buy it around me. Right. We buy together Monday plus contractor that made a living off doing nothing but reading. Yes. Right? We said, I’m a build a business because no other A-plus contractor would touch it. Why would you go from build Chipotle is, and McDonald’s in marking it up 44% to coming down, playing with you guys.

We have no clue what you’re doing. I’m [00:16:00] losing money at 10%. I’m losing money everywhere already. So we realized that if, if we had our clients that we are choosing, we built a name for ourselves as countries in Chicago, where we could be choosing. So when I get calls, they long for fortune builders and rhinitis and home vestors I would say, okay, how long have you been in the game though?

Oh, this is, this is like my third house. Not for me, brother called the guy down the street. I knew my game very well. Right. You’re going to cost me money and then you’re gonna play me for somehow. Right. The reality was it’s how it works. The reality was well that we need to be, let’s have some transparency.

Right. Let’s have some open dialogue. Ask me questions about this project. I will give you honest opinion. We’re going to establish some rapport, create some transparency which creates trust. And then let’s talk some numbers. Right? I know you have a formula. I know there has to be a return you’re looking for, but let me help you understand what’s happening in this property.

So I can tell you if what we can do at the max and what your contingency should be, what the risk you’re not considering, so that [00:17:00] you make a better decision on taking down the deal. And once we started doing that, that changed the game. When I would actually have clients come to me with a property under contract, and I’d say, I’d walk away, brother.

I’d walk away because I’m going to hit you with 30 grand and change orders. You can’t afford that. I’d walk away. There’s too many hidden problems here. When we started offering that, that’s when we realized. Well, the investors are listening. That’s what I’m like. Okay. Okay. All right. They’re listening.

Finally. No, don’t buy this house because for us, we’re both gonna lose. What’s the point. I’m gonna lose that reputation. You’re gonna lose that money. Forget it. And that’s what it comes down to is take your contractor, establish dialogue, and have trust in the process. You’re going to know real quick, man, if you and I jog.

You’re going to know real quick on your pre walk, your first walk with any contractor, if you get along or not. And if you’ve got a contract is going, yep. I’ve seen that before. Sure. I’ve done 12 of these yet. You have all the time. That’s not the guy you want. You want the guy that says, yes, this is a load bearing.

Well, because of X. And if we have to do this, this is what we have to [00:18:00] do. And it’s going to cost you X and it’s going to take X amount of time. You want a guy that’s going to start telling you how to finalize your scope of work. Not that catered to your scope of work and rip you off as long as you’re doing it.

Absolutely. I can say this shit all day, Mike. I thought we were talking about freedom. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: [00:18:18] Well, in the vein of freedom, you know the question, another question for you is look, one of the things, when I, if I go back about 10 years, I was whole, I actually, I primarily wanted to rehab when I started and I didn’t really understand wholesaling when I first started and I quickly did realize that it’s a big part.

Of cashflow in your businesses, especially early on. And as I grew though, I realized, look, I make a lot more money, rehabbing. No doubt. And so in right now is, is an, it is a. You know, is it’s the same issue is like, look, it’s harder to find like marketing costs have gone up. Lead generation is tough, all that stuff.

Right? So why not squeeze more fruit out of more juice out of the fruits that you have now, I’m not telling you guys to go [00:19:00] rehab everything, but what I’m telling you is you can make more money. If you, if you could, you know, you shouldn’t rehab every house, no doubt. Some else you should just wholesale or just listed, not do anything.

Right. But, uh, if you can make more money, wholesaling or rehabbing, and there’s always a rule of thumb, like, you know, my rule of thumb has always been, if I can make double or more, I should do that. Right. Because there’s a lot more effort that comes in with it. And I think one of the things that Roddy.

Brings to the table here is teaching people how to really be rehabbers instead of just trying to figure it out and being a Guinea pig with your own. Uh, thanks. So, so two parts, so two questions here are, I’m going to bring you a question. I want to ask everybody else a question first. Maybe just chat in what your mix looks like right now.

Are you primarily wholesaling? What percentage of rehabs are you doing and has that shifted through all this, through all this code stuff? Cause I’m gonna tell you right now, the retail market is if you re, if you look at statistics, the retail market. Is down right. But the truth is, is most people that are selling retail right now, investors are making more [00:20:00] money than ever because there’s no inventory on the market.

Right. So we’re benefiting from that. So you should be doing more of that activity. So my question for you, Rodney, is talk a little bit more about how people can get closer to freedom. Maybe start, start for that financial freedom by shifting and doing more rehabbing and wholesaling. Then maybe they have in the past, even though the market seems crazy right now.

Ryan: [00:20:21] Uh, that’s a tough one because rehabbing is not easy, right? I mean, it’s just not everybody knows that everybody who’s rehab knows it’s not easy and the money always looks good on paper. The deal always looks great on paper. You’re taking it down for a reason. Cause the numbers make sense to you in some form or fashion, but unless you’re not getting involved at some level in your rehab, you have no chance.

Right. And I’m not suggesting by any means that you, you jump into country structure. Right? What happens often is that of investors operate as a GC without realizing they’re being the GC, right. They to control the cost and they want to hire us up. That’s great. But why don’t you learn what a GC actually does?

So you’re more efficient, right? Um, and I know a lot of stuff, trust me. I have a lot of students and a lot of [00:21:00] clients that even, you know, in different States where some of those States are cracking down on these investors saying, you need to get a license. Now you’re operating as a GC. We see it. And also now they’re calling and saying, well, really?

How does a GC, how does a GC

Mike: [00:21:11] work?

Ryan: [00:21:12] You know, most people, I see the last one that somebody just posted love and hate rehabs. That’s it. Everybody

Mike: [00:21:18] love, hate relationship.

Ryan: [00:21:19] I have a love, hate relationship or rehab, but to me, that’s just what I do. I wake up and I rehab, but. It’s that’s exactly it. And for us to, so you guys know, all we see is Facebook user.

We don’t see anything else. So we don’t know any names. So Facebook, so the last Facebook user, thank you at 1523, but the reality is, yeah, man, at the end of the day, don’t rehab, if you don’t plan on being a participant and do not rehab, if you don’t plan and understanding what your role is, your role as project manager, understand that your job is to manage the process.

Don’t manage the people. You can’t manage. The people. Right. Think of college. You go to college for the first time, right? And you get out of here knowledge and you get your first job. Everybody’s like, I want the big paycheck and the big salary who the hell is going to give you a big [00:22:00] salary. You have zero experience, right?

That’s what rehabbing is. Right. So if you’re trying to scale, but you’ve only done 10 this year. Good job on the 10th, without question, but scale at an adequate rate. But during that scaling, you’re learning, you’re asking people for help. You’re circling. Like I said earlier, you’re finding a better circle of guys who you want to do.

20, go hang out with the guys doing 20 then. You want to do 100, go hang out with the guys doing a hundred then, right? You want a GC who’s objective. Then you give us a call. So we can say, I wouldn’t do that. If I were you, it makes no sense to me. You’re not seeing it the way we see it right now. Every contract is going to be there to help you because you’re not actually hiring them for the service of help.

You’re hiring from the service to build. And in construction, we have a saying called, make it work, you get fit, right. They’re not going to tell you that. Right. But sometimes you just like, Oh, I got to make that fit in there. Got to do it. You have to do, but as long as it’s done to code, yeah, that’s all that matters.

So the idea of understanding your role in the process is why. And [00:23:00] when you should enter the rehab game, if you’re willing to learn and willing to grow, but most importantly, going back to the freedom of fear, If you’re willing to just take the risk, but you know, you’re going to learn as you go, I think, go for it.

But if you are, if you’re listening to this call and you think, you know what you’re talking about and useless in this call, and you’re like, Oh, I’ve done a hundred. I know what I’m talking because there’s a lot of you watching and doing that. Cause that’s just the nature of the game. And I guarantee there’s some watching going, Oh, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, please.

The reality is I know what I’m talking about. This is what I do. And I’m encouraging all of you. To continue to grow, then you will have financial freedom. So some of you think you’re good. You have a lot of money. You’re making money. Good. God bless you. But at the end of the day, if you have it big dreams and big goals, which is what this is all about, must continue to educate.

You must continue to have the right circle and you must continue to grow with that circle. Get bigger, better people that are smarter than you. I still do this on a regular basis. Yeah, you

Mike: [00:23:55] have to, you gotta be around too. I mean, if you don’t like, you know, when we’re at investor fuel that I think there’s always this [00:24:00] aha moments.

People are like, man, they don’t say it, but I thought I knew everything. I just heard something that like totally changed it for me just by getting around people that are having the right discussions. Right. Or, or like you said, just by getting around, uh, either a contractor or another investor, that’s doing high volume.

It’s like, how are you doing this? And what can I learn from

Ryan: [00:24:16] it? Right, exactly.

Mike: [00:24:18] Exactly. You hear about, uh, somebody was asking about their, their, their. I’ll kind of say with what their example was was around. They just basically need to do a bunch of pool work replaster and stuff like that. But to kind of broaden that, what do you do, how do you decide when to hire a GC versus, um, you know, specialists for different things?

Sometimes some GC, like most GCs don’t want to do small jobs. Right. And if you just have a few things, you have your whole tailing cleaning up a couple of things you decide when to hire a GC. Is there like a price point. Or

Ryan: [00:24:48] what are they? So, so an average contingency to rehab should be 10% right now when you’re looking at your deal and you know, you’ve got some wiggle room and you’re willing to go like a 20% contingency, then take the [00:25:00] risk.

Right. But if you’re going to hire a GC and you’re going to buy into everything that GCs telling you, and to some degree you should, right. You’re hiring this professional, right? Yeah. Just keep in mind that you’re going to be participating in dealing with phone calls and emails and all these questions and follow up.

And you’re going to be challenging the timeline and challenging the quality and trying to schedule, guess what? You are a project manager. So you’re almost paying twice. What, so what’s your time worth? Is the question. What are you worth? Because that’s what I’m suggesting is at what point do you hire a GC?

Well, for sure when it’s a specialized job, like a pool of pools, a great hire, a

Mike: [00:25:37] actual pool contractor

Ryan: [00:25:39] for that. Right. Right. When you’re dealing with basements, foundations of concrete hire actual concrete, Uh, contractors for that, because that’s what they specialize in prepared to pay retail because they don’t have to drop down to rehab.

Right. It’s the GCU higher. Remember that UC operates as your project manager, his job or her job is to put all the pieces together and all the [00:26:00] subs line them up. Let’s schedule together, figure out the pricing, negotiate. Um, managed draws, which they’re not very good at and manage people’s personalities, which they’re also not very good at.

So at the end of the day, that’s, that’s one of the tough things to decipher it. But I would look at your scope of work, right? Is your scope of work? A remodel is your scope of work. A hotel is your scope of work, a hundred thousand dollars rehab where there’s a renovation involved. Does your scope of work require an architect?

Cause your scope of work is actually going to tell you at what level you need to start playing your game. Cause like I said earlier, you could play to be good. Or you could practice and train to be great. And at some level you might must actually hire the best of the best and you have to pay for that.

So if you look at a project early on and you’re scouting it out, right, you’re trying to make a deal and you’re trying to go deepest hell on that deal. Good. But keep in mind and think about, don’t think about just your buy box. Think about your rehab box. Think about your construction box. What are you facing?

What could possibly be the risks? What could possibly be the guys you need? Right. How many people buy bad houses, you know, in the Midwest and have [00:27:00] foundations. And patients that are leaking and find out they need like 13 peers, right? People like what’s a peer that’s good Akasha, like eight to 800 to a grand up here.

Did you plan for that? Is that in your budget? No, of course. Well, there you go. There’s your first change order right there. So these are things that, you know, it takes time for you to take the accountability, to, to learn. Yep. So all the way back to the beginning, should I rehab only rehab? If you plan to learn.

If you don’t plan to learn don’t rehab. Cause you’re just giving money away. You know, you really are. You’re just giving money away.

Yup.

Mike: [00:27:32] Yup. Awesome. Well, Ronnie, thanks for joining us today. Good to see you, buddy. Freedom, baby. Yeah, I think I asked my floor. So if you’re going to be in Fort worth and you’re coming with your wife, right.

Ryan: [00:27:42] Will be down there with my beautiful wife. Yes, I will.

Mike: [00:27:44] Yeah. Awesome.

Ryan: [00:27:45] I’ll look forward to seeing whoever comes down and down. Yeah, I think it’s Texas.

Mike: [00:27:49] Awesome. Hey, everybody, give a, give Rodney a hand. Hey Riley, when you jump off, just go into the Facebook chat and chat, a couple of things, links. I know you’ve got some software that you just rolled out to help people and a few other things.

So just, [00:28:00] you know, go ahead and go ahead and, uh, Share a couple of links that will help people out with your stuff. Okay.

Ryan: [00:28:05] Will do Mike. Thank you very much. Thank you everybody.

Mike: [00:28:08] Let’s keep rocking your hand. Nobody can hear you, but they can hear me. That’s fine. On the behalf of the listeners rotting,

Ryan: [00:28:15] the silent clap.

I love that.

Mike: [00:28:17] Hey, I hope you enjoyed our freedom series, which includes eight shows with eight talented. Real estate industry legends. How can we work more together? I hope real estate investors in a few different ways. I’d love to help you get to know you better. And here’s how I run the investor fuel mastermind.

It is a leading mastermind association of America’s top real estate investors. You can learn more about [email protected]. In fact, our next meeting is coming up very fast. If you go to investor fuel.com, you can learn more. Schedule a call to talk with our team. The second way is I help real estate investors generate better leads.

I’m a cofounder of an agency that we call the investor machine. You can learn [email protected]. We help take a consistent and high quality [00:29:00] leads off of your plate. So you can focus on getting more of your life back and driving the business. The third way is I have a professional real estate investor network group.

It’s a free Facebook group for professional real estate investors. Only, not for newbies, have a soft spot in my heart for newbies as well. And I’ll talk about that in a second. Okay. But if you’re experienced, if you’re actually doing deals each and every month, you should check out our professional real estate investor network.

By going to flipnerd.com/professional. That’ll redirect you to the right Facebook group. And last but not least for the past, almost seven years, we’ve created over 1500 video podcast shows, hundreds of blogs live so free training all on flipnerd.com. You can go there and check it out.